A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself; and both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and openi...ng on a little lawn, surrounded in the rich foliage of summer, was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the b...uffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairies, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story. This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed,--these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces,--and this would always be his.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may will ...call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and water melons for dessert. For this farmer, a clever and well-disposed man, cult...ivated a large patch of melons for the Hooksett and Concord markets. He hospitably entertained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and kiln and melon-patch, warning us to step over the tight rope which surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, while he pointed to a little bower at one corner, where it connected with the lock of a gun ranging with the line, and where, he informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped high over the line, and sympathized with our host's on the whole quite human, if not humane, interest in the success of his experiment. That night especially thieves were to be expected, from rumors in the atmosphere, and the priming was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who had his dwelling between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encouragement of distant political organizations, and by his own tenacity, held a property in his melons, and continued to plant. We suggested melon seeds of new varieties and fruit of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had come away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and unbribable influence of Nature. Strawberries and melons grew as well in one man's garden as another's, and the sun lodges as kindly under his hillside,--when we had imagined that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls whom we know.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Far up in the country,--for we would be faithful to our experience,--in Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad in the woods, goin...g to muster in full regimentals, and holding the middle of the road; deep in the forest, with shouldered musket and military step, and thoughts of war and glory all to himself. It was a sore trial to the youth, tougher than many a battle, to get by us creditably and with soldier-like bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in his thin military pants, and by the time we had got up with him, all the sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken his face, and he skulked past as if he were driving his father's sheep under a sword-proof helmet. It was too much for him to carry any extra armor then, who could not easily dispose of his natural arms. And for his legs, they were like heavy artillery in boggy places; better to cut the traces and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one with another for want of other foes. But he did get by and get off with all his munitions, and lived to fight another day; and I do not record this as casting any suspicion on his honor and real bravery in the field.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stoppin...g short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The trees lay at full length, four or five feet deep, and crossing each other in all directions, all black as charcoal, but perfec...tly sound within, still good for fuel or for timber; soon they would be cut into lengths and burnt again. Here were thousands of cords, enough to keep the poor of Boston and New York amply warm for a winter, which only cumbered the ground and were in the settler's way. And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man warmed by it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The mode of clearing and planting is to fell the trees, and burn once what will burn, then cut them up into suitable lengths, roll... into heaps, and burn again; then, with a hoe, plant potatoes where you can come at the ground between the stumps and charred logs; for a first crop the ashes suffice for manure, and no hoeing being necessary the first year. In the fall, cut, roll, and burn again, and so on, till the land is cleared; and soon it is ready for grain, and to be laid down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,Straight and swift to my wounded I go,...Where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in,Where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground,Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital,To the long rows of cots up and down each side I return,To each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss,An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail,Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'dagain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

...there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root gro...ws old in the earth, and its stump dies in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »